Updated: 2020-11-23 08:54:55 PDT

Original version created 2020-05-03. See below for revision history

Intro


The spread of the SARS-COV-19 viral disease defies description in terms of a single statistic. To be informed about personal risk we need to know more than how many people have been sick at a national level or even state level, we need information about how many people are currently sick in our communicty and how the number of sick people is changing is changing at a state and even county level. It can be hard to find this information.

This analysis seeks to fill partially that gap. It includes:
1. Several national pictures of disease trends to enable a “large pattern” view of how disease has and is evolving a on country-wide scale.
2. A per capita analysis of disease spread.
3. A more granular analysis of regions, states, and counties to shed light on local disease pattern evolution.
4. Details of the time evolution of growth statistics.


This computed document is part of a constantly evolving analysis, so please “refresh” for the latest updates. If you have suggestions or comments please reach out on twitter @WinstonOnData or facebook.


You are welcome to visit my code repository on Github.
You are also welcome to visit my analysis on the Politics of COVID
Finally, you can alway check my Rpubs for new documents and updates.

National Statistics

Total & Active Cases, and Deaths

These trend charts show the national disease statistics. Note that raw daily trends are systematically related to the M-F work week.

Mortality and \(R_e\)

Distribution of \(R_e\) Values

There is a wide distribution of \(R_e\) across regions and counties. The distributions in the graph below looks roughly symmetrical because the x-scale is logarithmic.

National Maps

State Level Data

There are several maps below. These include:

  • pandemic total cases (How many people have been sick?)
  • pandemic total cases per capita (What fraction of people have been sick?)
  • daily cases per capita (what fraction of people are getting sick?)
  • forecast short term cases per capita (based on \(R_e\)) (how fast is the disease growning or shrinking?)

Pandemic Totals

Current Status of Active Disease

Computed Reproduction Rate \(R_e\).

Mapped County Data

While the State-Level Data Tell as remarkable story, it is also interesting to look at County-level data


state R_e cases daily cases daily cases per 100k
North Dakota 1.03 72812 1383 183.9
Wyoming 1.05 28470 843 144.9
New Mexico 1.45 81927 2952 141.1
South Dakota 0.91 71849 1161 136.6
Montana 1.13 55980 1378 132.3
Minnesota 1.08 270520 7238 130.9
Wisconsin 1.03 378487 7147 123.7
Utah 1.12 176839 3680 120.9
Iowa 0.93 212304 3782 120.7
Nebraska 0.99 114516 2222 116.7
Indiana 1.10 298618 6986 105.3
Colorado 1.12 200627 5633 101.9
Illinois 1.02 659429 12428 96.9
Kansas 0.94 139863 2579 88.7
Idaho 1.01 92560 1388 82.2
Oklahoma 1.15 173921 3220 82.2
Kentucky 1.20 161595 3352 75.5
Nevada 1.19 134562 2169 74.2
Missouri 0.99 260524 4465 73.3
Michigan 1.02 328852 7183 72.1
Ohio 1.12 351700 8340 71.6
Rhode Island 1.06 40500 710 67.2
Tennessee 1.00 333831 4140 62.2
West Virginia 1.21 40611 1117 61.1
Arkansas 1.09 142774 1804 60.3
Arizona 1.24 299864 3812 54.9
Pennsylvania 1.19 314085 6889 53.9
Louisiana 1.02 219825 2495 53.5
Delaware 1.23 31622 476 50.1
Mississippi 1.18 143249 1446 48.4
Alabama 1.08 232712 2298 47.2
New Jersey 1.11 307118 4195 47.2
Texas 1.08 1175027 12278 44.0
Connecticut 0.91 102676 1539 43.0
Maryland 1.22 182342 2540 42.3
Florida 1.17 936553 8335 40.5
Massachusetts 1.09 199344 2650 38.8
North Carolina 1.16 336776 3707 36.5
Georgia 1.22 430286 3725 36.2
New Hampshire 1.24 17377 465 34.6
South Carolina 1.10 206381 1696 34.2
Oregon 1.23 64870 1320 32.3
California 1.20 1119721 12618 32.2
New York 1.12 600638 5517 28.1
Washington 0.98 150664 2013 27.6
Virginia 1.19 171057 1846 26.5
Vermont 1.26 3655 123 19.7
Maine 1.11 10354 213 16.0

Regional Snapshots

Regional snapshots reveal the highly nuanced behavior of disease spread. Each snaphot includes multiple states and selected counties.

How to read the charts

There are four components:
1. State Maps show the number of active cases and with the Reproduction rate encoded as color.
2. State Graphs State-wide trend graphs.
3. Severity Ranking These is a table of counties where the highest number of new cases are expected. Severity is a compounded function \(f(R, cases(t))\). This is useful for finding new (often unexpected) “hot spots.” Added per capita rates.
4. County Graphs encode the R-value in the active number of cases. R is the Reproduction Rate.

(NOTE: R < 1 implies a shrinking number of active cases, R > 1 implies a growing number of active cases. For R = 1, active cases are stable. ).


Washington and Oregon

California

Four Corners

Mid-Atlantic

Deep South

FL and GA

Texas & Oklahoma

Michigan & Wisconsin

Minnesota, North Dakota, and South Dakota

Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island

New York

Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine

Carolinas

North-Rockies

Midwest

Tennessee and Kentucky

Missouri and Arkansas

Conclusions

It’s in control some places, but not all places. And many places are completely out-of-control.

Stay Safe!
Be Diligent!
…and PLEASE WEAR A MASK



Built with R Version 4.0.3
This document took 256.8 seconds to compute.
2020-11-23 08:59:12

version history

Today is 2020-11-23.
187 days ago: plots of multiple states.
179 days ago: include \(R_e\) computation.
176 days ago: created color coding for \(R_e\) plots.
171 days ago: reduced \(t_d\) from 14 to 12 days. 14 was the upper range of what most people are using. Wanted slightly higher bandwidth.
171 days ago: “persistence” time evolution.
164 days ago: “In control” mapping.
164 days ago: “Severity” tables to county analysis. Severity is computed from the number of new cases expected at current \(R_e\) for 6 days in the future. It does not trend \(R_e\), which could be a future enhancement.
156 days ago: Added census API functionality to compute per capita infection rates. Reduced spline spar = 0.65.
151 days ago: Added Per Capita US Map.
149 days ago: Deprecated national map. can be found here.
145 days ago: added state “Hot 10” analysis.
140 days ago: cleaned up county analysis to show cases and actual data. Moved “Hot 10” analysis to separate web page. Moved “Hot 10” here.
138 days ago: added per capita disease and mortality to state-level analysis.
126 days ago: changed to county boundaries on national map for per capita disease.
121 days ago: corrected factor of two error in death trend data.
117 days ago: removed “contained and uncontained” analysis, replacing it with county level control map.
112 days ago: added county level “baseline control” and \(R_e\) maps.
108 days ago: fixed normalization error on total disease stats plot.
101 days ago: Corrected some text matching in generating county level plots of \(R_e\).
95 days ago: adapted knot spacing for spline.
81 days ago:using separate knot spacing for spline fits of deaths and cases.
79 days ago: MAJOR UPDATE. Moved things around. Added per capita severity map.
51 days ago: improved national trends with per capita analysis.
50 days ago: added county level per capita daily cases map. testing new color scheme.
23 days ago: changed to daily mortaility tracking from ratio of overall totals.
16 days ago: added trend line to state charts.

Appendix: Methods

Disease data are sourced from the NYTimes Github Repo. Population data are sourced from the US Census census.gov

Case growth is assumed to follow a linear-partial differential equation. This type of model is useful in populations where there is still very low immunity and high susceptibility.

\[\frac{\partial}{\partial t} cases(t, t_d) = a \times cases(t, t_d) \] \(cases(t)\) is the number of active cases at \(t\) dependent on recent history, \(t_d\). The constant \(a\) and has units of \(time^{-1}\) and is typically computed on a daily basis

Solution results are often expressed in terms of the Effective Reproduction Rate \(R_e\), where \[a \space = \space ln(R_e).\]

\(R_e\) has a simple interpretation; when \(R_e \space > \space 1\) the number of \(cases(t)\) increases (exponentially) while when \(R_e \space < \space 1\) the number of \(cases(t)\) decreases.

Practically, computing \(a\) can be extremely complicated, depending on how functionally it is related to history \(t_d\). And guessing functional forms can be as much art as science. To avoid that, let’s keep things simple…

Assuming a straight-forward flat time of latent infection \(t_d\) = 12 days, with \[f(t) = \int_{t - t_d}^{t}cases(t')\; dt' ,\] \(R_e\) reduces to a simple computation

\[R_e(t) = \frac{cases(t)}{\int_{t - t_d}^{t}cases(t')\; dt'} \times t_d .\]

Typical range of \(t_d\) range \(7 \geq t_d \geq 14\). The only other numerical treatment is, in order to reduce noise the data, I smooth case data with a reticulated spline to compute derivatives.


DISCLAIMER: Results are for entertainment purposes only. Please consult local authorities for official data and forecasts.